Cognitive stimulation for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increase in the recognition and use of psychosocial interventions for dementia. This has coincided with an increase in high-quality research in the area, and restrictions in the use of drug therapies for Alzheimer’s disease in the UK. Cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) is a brief group treatment for people with mild-to-moderate dementia, based on the theoretical concepts of reality orientation and cognitive stimulation. It involves 14 sessions of themed activities which typically run twice a week over a 7-week period. A multicenter, randomized controlled trial showed significant benefits in cognition and participant-rated quality of life when comparing CST versus no treatment. These benefits in cognition were comparable to those gained through medication, and CST also proved to be cost-effective. Influenced by this research, the latest guidelines released by NICE recommended cognitive stimulation only as an intervention for treating the cognitive symptoms of dementia. This perspective describes how CST was developed and evaluated, its use in clinical settings and issues for future investigation, such as individualized CST.

Keywords::

• Alzheimer’s disease
• cognitive stimulation
• CST
• dementia
• group therapy
• quality of life

Financial & competing interests disclosure

Bob Woods’ department, the Dementia Services Development Centre at the University of Wales, Bangor, UK, receives royalties for the CST training manuals. Aimee Spector runs a private CST training course for which she is paid directly. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.